type far less efficient than Grover had found her to be. I wouldn't put it past a Botticelli virgin, he reflected, to have been a sharp-tongued boss of a lot of wilted dark-eyed girls perspiring over long ironing boards. The girls often looked at him, while he waited to have his wash wrapped up, as though they were noticing the way his cheek went from the outside corner of his eye to his chin. Poor Rhoda. Her last letter, blowing into the sultry and exotic air of Paris, had seemed strangely simple, like fresh dainty muslin against rich but threadbare brocade, like a Scarlatti sonata after a Scriabin prelude. And as always, his affectionately.
The laundress looked up for a moment and smiled, impartially, the sort of smile that Parisians seemed able to accomplish with their thoughts far afield, just as certain persons say Thank You without being conscious of doing so. It would be so comforting, he reflected, as he walked down the tiny street, to feel that one did not impress them as being so fearfully harmless. Is it because I buy peaches and spit the stones into the gutter? Is it because I sprawl on Mme. Choiseul's balcony and play with Mouche? Is it because I never seem to know whether my laundry is going to be twenty francs or five? Is it merely the way my cheek goes? And if it goes that way when you're twenty-three, will it keep going that way even when you're sixty and it's all over white stubble?
The woman who kept the odds-and-ends shop where
